Episodios

  • Field of Schemes: Everyone Loved Him. Nobody Knew Him.
    Dec 17 2025

    True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard investigates the double life of Randy Constant, a Missouri farmer who committed the largest organic fraud in American history—$142 million.

    He packed bags for hungry children. He led church mission trips. He also spent $360,000 on Las Vegas escorts and hid three secret relationships from his wife of 39 years. She learned everything when prosecutors read his bank statements in open court.

    Three days after sentencing, he was dead.

    All details from court documents, official records, and sworn testimony.

    Subscribers get the actual case files—court documents, sentencing transcripts, and source materials—delivered as each episode drops. Subscribe free at TrueCrimeUnheard.com/subscribe

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    1 h y 21 m
  • They Were Hiking Friends. Then She Ordered the Hit.
    Dec 10 2025

    The prosecutor reviewed everything and said something haunting: "I don't think Sasser knows why she wanted her dead either."

    In 2023, Melody Sasser—a 47-year-old environmental compliance specialist from Knoxville, Tennessee—paid nearly $10,000 in Bitcoin to have a woman murdered. The target wasn't an ex-lover. Wasn't a rival. She was the fiancée of a man Sasser had hiked with a few times.

    This episode traces how a Match.com connection turned into a dark web murder plot, the digital trail that led federal agents to her door, and the question that still has no answer: what turns a hiking friend into someone capable of ordering a hit?

    True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard examines the psychology, the evidence, and the 100-month sentence that followed.

    Subscribe at https://truecrimeunheard.com/subscribe to get the case files for this episode—federal complaints, court documents, and source materials delivered to your inbox.

    All details in this episode come from court documents, official records, and sworn testimony. Full source links at TrueCrimeUnheard.com.

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    50 m
  • Inside a Serial Fraudster's Playbook: Clemency for a Con Man
    Dec 3 2025

    Eli Weinstein defrauded investors of $275 million across three separate Ponzi schemes spanning two decades. He went to federal prison. He received presidential clemency. Within months, he was running another scheme.

    This episode goes deep inside the mechanics of serial financial fraud—how these criminals build trust, move money, hide assets, and exploit the very systems designed to stop them. From Weinstein's origins as a used car salesman in New Jersey to his prosecution in 2025, this is a case study in how Ponzi schemes actually work—and why the same people keep getting away with it.

    Subscribe to the email list at TrueCrimeUnheard.com to get exclusive access to the court documents and case files for each episode.

    All details come from court documents, official records, and sworn testimony.

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    2 h y 17 m
  • The Wrong Target Again and Again – How a Murder-for-Hire Went So Incredibly Off the Rails
    Nov 26 2025

    Between September and December 2022, a murder-for-hire conspiracy in Mobile, Alabama produced one of the most spectacular criminal failures in recent memory. John McCarroll recruited shooters, provided illegal weapons including machineguns, and directed attack after attack against his target: Milton Carter.

    The result? Two innocent people murdered. One permanently paralyzed. Six others wounded. Nine victims who had nothing to do with McCarroll's vendetta.

    Milton Carter? Never got a scratch.

    Even more damning: the defendants documented their own crimes on Instagram and Facebook—bragging about shootings, mocking failed attempts, and continuing to obstruct justice on recorded jail phone lines.

    This is True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard. I'm Steve Rhode. This case comes directly from federal court documents, FBI evidence, trial testimony, and jury verdicts.

    All details in this episode come from court documents, official records, and sworn testimony.

    To stay updated with the latest episodes, join my exclusive email notification list at https://TrueCrimeUnheard.com and get access to the behind the scenes case files.

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    45 m
  • What You Don't Hear on Wednesday Morning | Behind the Scenes
    Nov 19 2025

    It was about 2 AM when I realized the Lobster Trap Murder case wasn't what I thought it was. I'd been reading court documents for hours—the victim, the violence, the assumptions. But then I got to the transcripts about the accomplice who got dragged in. She wasn't a criminal. She was trying to help someone she thought cared about her. Bad choices in a moment of misplaced loyalty destroyed her life.

    That's what you don't hear on Wednesday mornings.

    This week, instead of a case, I'm pulling back the curtain on True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard. How my background as a police dispatcher, morgue technician, 30-year investigative journalist, surveillance photographer, and search-and-rescue pilot (callsign: FIRE DEMON 1) shapes every episode. Why I obsess over court documents instead of trusting summaries. What 20-60 hours of research actually looks like. Why listeners tell me they sat in their driveway because they couldn't stop listening until they knew what happened.

    Plus: what's coming next, including cases about emergency response failures and institutional protection of predators.

    No AI narration. No sensationalism. Just documentary storytelling with the receipts to prove it.

    This episode: 25 minutes of what really goes into the work.

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    22 m
  • The Designer Who Went to Prison - Part 2: The Reckoning
    Nov 12 2025

    After 14 brutal months in a Colombian maximum-security prison, 71-year-old fashion designer Nancy Gonzalez stood before a federal judge in Miami for sentencing. Her crime? Smuggling handbag samples made from exotic leather to meet Fashion Week deadlines.

    In this conclusion to Nancy's story, prosecutors compared her to a "cocaine kingpin" and argued she deserved years in federal prison. Her defense attorneys called it selective prosecution—pointing out that the luxury retailers who sold her bags for thousands of dollars faced no charges, no investigations, and no accountability.

    What happened in that courtroom divided everyone who heard it.

    Judge Robert N. Scola sentenced Nancy to 18 months—below federal guidelines but still devastating for a woman who'd already lost her son, her business, and her freedom. Meanwhile, 300 Colombian women who depended on her for employment lost their jobs. The couriers she recruited now carry federal convictions. And the retailers? Business as usual.

    This episode explores the sentencing hearing, the character letters, the personal tragedy, and the three competing truths that all exist simultaneously: Nancy broke the law. The fashion industry created impossible conditions. And selective prosecution is real.

    Was justice served? Or did the wrong people pay the highest price?

    📁 Download complete court transcripts, sentencing memoranda, and character reference letters at TrueCrimeUnheard.com

    🔍 Research Opportunity: Help investigate luxury retailers' exotic leather sourcing policies at tapyournews.com/tc-research

    All facts verified through federal court documents and official records.

    Host: Steve Rhode - 30-year investigative journalist, former police dispatcher, SAR pilot

    New episodes every Wednesday. Case updates Tuesday & Saturday.

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    1 h y 2 m
  • The Designer Who Went to Prison - Part 1 - The Empire
    Nov 5 2025

    July 2022. Colombian federal agents arrest Nancy Gonzalez—a luxury fashion designer whose handbags were sold at Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, and Neiman Marcus. The charge: wildlife smuggling. But here's what makes this case unforgettable: Nancy went to federal prison while the retailers who sold her bags faced zero consequences. This is True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard—and Part 1 reveals how an empire was built on endangered reptile skins, who knew what was happening, and why only one person paid the price.

    🔍 RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY: Want to be part of the show? This episode includes an investigative assignment. Go to TrueCrimeUnheard.com and click Submit Research—you could be featured in Part 2.

    All details in this episode come from court documents, official records, and sworn testimony. Full source links at TrueCrimeUnheard.com.

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    55 m
  • The Instagram and TikTok Murder Plot: Ashley Grayson | True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard
    Oct 29 2025

    Ashley Grayson Murder-for-Hire Case Summary:

    Social media influencer Ashley Grayson was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for conspiracy to use interstate commerce facilities in commission of murder-for-hire. The 2022 case involved three targets: business rival Derricka Harwell, ex-boyfriend Patrick Tate, and TikTok critic Sherell Hodge. Olivia Johnson recorded the plot on FaceTime, leading to Grayson's arrest and conviction in Memphis federal court.

    Key Facts:

    • Federal murder-for-hire conviction (18 U.S.C. §1958)
    • Five-minute recorded FaceTime call as primary evidence
    • $10,000 cash payment captured on surveillance
    • Trial held March 2024; sentencing October 2024
    • Documentary true crime podcast with court transcripts


    Resources: 📄 Download official source docs on the episode page or sign up for episode alerts at TrueCrimeUnheard.com 💬 Have feedback or questions? Use the comment form at TrueCrimeUnheard.com

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    1 h y 42 m